If I may paste two paragraphs from a sidebar on p. 105 of the HeroQuest 1 book:

Quote

Charlatans and False Belief

A world full of magic can also be a world brimming over with charlatans, hucksters, and exploiters claiming magical powers they do not have, espousing false religions, and promulgating useless magical techniques. Many crackpots and deluded souls wrongly believe that deities, spirits, pure forms, or entities of their own fevered imaginations have favored them.

Just as there is never a shortage of deceivers, the supply of gullible Gloranthans is also inexhaustible. The many false claims about magic partly explain the extreme conservatism of most Gloranthan homelands; the people who have thrived are those who refused to try alternative magic.

Maybe there's a Beaver Spirit that makes this easier. Sounds very beaverish, at least.

IMG the lowland Dragon Pass duck clans herd beavers for carpentry, for pulling swamp chariots and sleds, and for fur and meat. So they're kind of like horses. The lowland clans also herd giant snails, and they're kind of like cows. Then there are highland clans that herd and ride sheep.

I dunno if I'd consider it "*the* common reaction"... it happens in the King of Dragon Pass game but are there other references to it? Might be more YGWV.

About traditions, I'd say a new clan will recognize the same ancestors (including the new clan founders, eventually) but has to find/get/create/invoke a new wyter. And traditions can evolve, like if the new clan ends up giving special honors to different minor gods or subcults for whatever reason.

About land, I think Greg said informally that all the best agricultural land was occupied in the first age. Of course wars and disasters such as the Dragonkill cause depopulation sometimes. And with magic you can sometimes make bad lands better. Anyway, fuel for storytelling.

Yeah. Although whenever the gods book comes out there might be a few hints about Teshnos in the form of local cult descriptions like "Solf is like Lodril but ___" where the ___'s would constitute the hints.

There is a very good Glorantha mod for Age of Wonders Shadow Magic called Age of Glorantha (link). I think it depends on motivation. Good total conversion modders are out there, but they don't grow on trees. I once aspired to make a Glorantha Civ 4 mod and asked Issaries for permission to start, at the time a console-style adventure game was also in pre-development, so for that reason Greg politely said no.

For one thing I think trolls run trade ships out of the Shadow Plateau along more or less the same trade routes as everyone else. Maybe using some alternate routes if they have different navigation skills, or help or contact with sea trolls, or contact with different communities like in Jrustela. But I think sea trolls are mostly not intelligent so they would have to be very primitive materially.

There's a mention somewhere of ice skating troll ships on the frozen White Sea. Maybe they run west out to the glacier and who knows, maybe even up and around the other way to Koromondol.

> assuming every age ends with a reappearance of the Devil (according to KoS)It's one of many things I prefer not to take too definitely, as a firm assumption.

But sure, yes, basically it was the excesses of the God Learners, which caused cataclysms. Does that mean there has to be a being taking the role of Wakboth? Shrug. In Middle Sea Empire p. 42, there's a suggestion that 3rd age Western scholars say that it was Gbaji who led the God Learners astray, working behind the scenes. Gbaji is the entity for which *they* use the epithet The Devil, but Gbaji and Wakboth have different mythologies.

About burning a whole library, it might not work if you do it impiously. But it might work at first. Another thing that might not make it work so well is if you don't understand what you're burning. Like if you haven't read it at all, or stole it from some foreigners and can't read it - well, maybe that sacrifice will not yield anything.

A scroll you copied yourself, devotionally, is probably the best sacrifice.

Guide p.135: "By 776, the heirs of these wizards, popularly called God Learners, had developed unusual magical methods to look at the world. The secret is dead with its initiates, but was evidently called the RuneQuest Sight. It apparently allowed initiates to see the world as a series of patterns, relationships, and repetitive reflections which could be organized according to the now famous Runes. Their Heroquesters followed the paths of their Runes through the Otherworld, and then shaped the Otherworld by planting those Runes into other parts of it."

I recently stumbled across the classic Compleat Enchanter books and have to imagine they were an inspiration. "... parallel world tales in which [universes] based on the mythologies, legends, and literary fantasies of our world [can] be reached by aligning one's mind to them by a system of symbolic logic. [The main characters] travel to several such worlds ..." (wikipedia)

I think the bits, as with the Red Goddess have to have existed, but their assembly as Yelm was new. Indeed Yelm would by Greg's suggestion be a composite of other figures: Antirius, Elmal, Kargzant, the Emperor etc. My point is not that is was created fresh, but the name Yelm is applied to a synthesis of these elements.

OK, well - when you say

2 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

Yelm is not the﻿god of the sun at the Dawn for Dara Happa [Antirius is].

... how do you think Yelm is different from dawn age Antirius? Concretely. How were his myths different? Likewise how do you think the current Antirius is different from the dawn age one?

We could walk the Revolution D100 path and have Foil, Shadowing, etc. be +30% bonuses to the relevant RQ:G skills when they are used in this particular way.

Yeah, in a Glorantha context it would be interesting to have Traits be a special thing you can learn from certain cults. The rules already provide other ways to get buffs - rune augments, heroquest rewards, and spirit and rune spells - but if you want even more chrome that's a way to get it. Or if you just wanted to hack RQG to make it more like Rd100, with a smaller skill list.

Can you explain ["one roll on the resistance table because it's simple"]?

Say that crit and special results require a certain margin of victory and possibly also a certain absolute roll. Disallow outcomes where both parties crit or special, on the grounds (if desired) that they're not important to include and are more an artifact of the mechanics than anything else.

If you're wondering how this plays in a game, I don't know, I've never done it. So it's my favourite in theory but not in practice. But I'm not attached to the opposed roll part of the core BRP mechanics or its consequences for combat, like the overall percentage of hits (which I'm not attached to, but if you are you can decrease the default success chance from 50%), or the way experienced fighters stalemate (which I'm not attached to either), or the advantage of ganging up (which I like, but other RPGs provide a lot of other ways to handle it). If anything I'd just as soon streamline out the double roll.

"Uz: Kyger Litor eats chaos, thrives in darkness, and enjoys the coldest winters. She proved her people could survive by being themselves." http://www.glorantha.com/docs/devil/ I think all trolls eat chaos creatures. (In fact Brushi is a thing IMG.)

Going by the trade route map on GtG p. 469, I think part of the main international trade route that's on a river only goes up to Duck Point. Then it turns east to through Boldhome and that section could be via the Creek, but there's also a Sartar Royal Road (GtG 188) which I think is meant to be the primary route.

And come to think of it, once you get to Wilmskirk coming from the north, I'm not sure how much traffic actually goes through Duck Point, as opposed to turning south on the Hendreiki road to Karse. That branch is on the main trade route map, too.

It makes sense that the river run from the Mirrorsea would end at the waterfalls southwest of New Crystal. Then there'd be another river run that might either end at the Marsh that's right there, or it would go through it. The Marsh is unlabeled in GtG/AAA but in Kerofinela Gazeteer it's the Pharaoh's Marsh and is said to be home to Newtlings. So maybe those Newtlings run that section of the river traffic.

Then there's the section through Beast Valley to Duck Point. It makes sense that the Beastmen wouldn't let them run Ox-pulling teams. It'd be natural for that run to be controlled by duck barges, except after Kallyr's Rebellion when they were outlawed.

GtG p. 469 also shows an alternate trade route through the dragon skull, but Jeff said it's smaller than the Sartar route (I think he said a tenth the size). I think the Beast Valley boats would also run up that tributary, but on the North side of the skull, Grazeland detail maps show those rivers as being very rough, so that section might be all land traffic.

I don't know how much of the propulsion would be sailing, rowing, polling, or magic. Or swimming, which canonically is how ducks do it (Sartar p. 233). Polling feels like it'd be more for smaller rivers. I'd probably say it's primarily rowing.

IMG the ducks can get through the Upland Marsh using land-or-water "duck boats" which are pulled by teams of beavers, together with the driver who uses an oar/pole along with their own feet, Flintstones-style. But The Lakes section of The River is also hard to get through, so I'm not sure how much international freight would bypass Boldhome. Small loads for special delivery, maybe.

"Sable Plateau
75, Benbulbin [irregular plateau type of thing in Ireland, small]
We are looking here at the northern edge, which is nearly fifty miles wide. That shows that they are almost fifteen miles high (!)"